Brave New World

Topical items and views on the impact of digitisation on publishing and its content and the issues that make the news. This blog follows the report 'Brave New World',
(http://www.ewidgetsonline.com/vcil/bravenewworld.html ), published by the Booksellers Association of the UK and Ireland and authored by Martyn Daniels. The views and comments expressed are those of the author.

Thursday, May 21, 2015

The UK Payments Council today stated that the use of cash by consumers,
businesses and financial organisations fell to 48% of payments last year. This
means that cashless payments have overtaken cash payments for the first time in
the UK. The cash volumes are expected to fall further by 30% to some 34% over
the next 10 years. It is claimed that 4.4% of adults ‘rarely use cash and the
average ATM withdraw has fallen to £67. The previous cashless payment by cheque
has dropped to just 1% of consumer payments whereas Debit card payments have
now become universally accepted and account for 24% of payments.

We all have seen the emergence of credit and debit cards and now the
attraction of Paypal to many who simply don’t want to input their card details
every time they buy something. Even small value transaction such as a cup of
coffee are increasingly done by cards and often contactless cards. Interestingly
the migration to plastic has not resulted in a price increase or price differentiation
by the retailers. The acceptance of Paypal has been significant catching out
many traders who first balked at the higher service charges.

However, Denmark is moving closer to becoming the world's first cashless
society, with the government proposes scrapping the obligation for retailers to
accept cash as payment. They are proposing that as of next year, business such
as clothing retailers, restaurants and petrol stations should no longer be
legally bound to accept cash payments. Some 30% of the population uses an
official Danske Bank app called MobilePay, which is similar to Google Wallet and other
contactless cards and links a mobile to other users' phones or to a sensor at
the till, allowing you to confirm payments with a simple swipe on your
smartphone's screen.

The Nordic countries of Denmark,
Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland lead the world in cashless payments and in and
Sweden in 2013 a bank robber left empty-handed, after he found out that the
Stockholm bank he held up did not carry any cash..

What is interesting in the UK is to
look at the proportion of cash payments by sector in 2014.

It is easy to understand low basket value retailers such as discount and
convenience stores, pubs and newsagents handling cash (68%, 78.5%, 83.9% and 84.8%
respectively), and high ticket retailers such as electrical stores, petrol
stations and supermarkets handling significantly less cash (33.8%, 24.5%, 43.8%
respectively. However the odd segment identified was Bookshops with 45.5% cash
transactions which says that they are low value and maybe more convenience than
we think.

Whatever, it is clear that the move to cashless is accelerating and with
it comes the increasing risk of fraud and transactional payments to third party
system and service providers.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

When we look at the future of on demand and streamed media services the
clue is in the word media. We are no longer shackled to thinking of vertical
movie, music, games but media hubs that satisfy all under one subscription.

To bring the point firmly home Spotify has announced it is adding more
non-music content to its app. The expanded service will include radio podcasts,
news bulletins, video clips and moves their 60 million regular users which
span some into a media one stop shop and they also have introduced a new
running mode that matches music to the pace of the listener which is based on
feedback from their smartphone's built-in sensors.

The
news comes on the same day that The Verge disclosed the details
of Sony’s Spotify contract and raised questions of whether the
model worked in the best interest of the production companies, or the artists.
The move is also intended to protect Spotify from competitive threats from
Apple’s planned streaming service and YouTube’s expansion moves.

Spotify’s
content partners include the BBC, TED, the science-tech talks organiser,
Disney, Vice Media, comedy podcast The Nerdist and clips from Amy Poehler’s
Smart Girls video channel. They will mix musicians and cooks in a show called
Turntable.

What
is clear is that Spotify has a vision past music and one which if successful
will help protect it from the new Spotify can provide music that matches a
runner's pace.

The
big question is whether Spotify’s 15 premium subscribers want and will use the
extra services today and allow Spotify to float their service on the stock
market.

Thursday, May 14, 2015

What is the state of the ebook market and are there
significant differences between the various different market segments and
geographical regions?

The question is not new and there are a significant number
of opinions on the answers. However, different markets move at different speeds
and sometimes in different direction and facts are often out of date and views often
reflect vested interests. The BookNet Canada annual survey of Canadian publishers, 'The State of Digital Publishing in Canada' findings may be subjective, but the range of questions asked and the ability
to track these against the same survey result from last year, make it a
worthwhile read for all and one which should be replicated in other markets.

It is easy to relate to; the 93% of publishers producing
ebooks, the 50% of active titles that are digitised, 24% of respondents who
have digitised over 75% of their backlists, the 52% who have seen increased revenues
between 2013 and 2014, but the big question remains on the size of growth we
can expect from ebooks moving forward and whether they need to change to
realise further market penetration?

Interesting questions where again asked on enhanced
ebooks. Do we continue to pour the same physical
book into the digital container and believe that the job is done? Do we look to
enhance the digital version to make it more collectable, even though, increasingly
the public are aware that they are not buying, but merely licencing a digital copy?
Are we in fact looking at the question of differentiation the wrong way and in
striving for the new to be better, losing sight of where the greatest value is perceived
and potential enhancement required?

The Canadian publishing respondents who believe that
enhanced ebooks offer no market impact, has increased from 40% to 73%, with
those believing a light impact has decreased from 33% to 20% and those who
believe that they hold a positive impact has dropped from 7% to ZERO%.

This clear drop in confidence by publishers in the
enhanced ebook will almost certainly be self-prophesying and result in fewer
enhanced ebooks, which in turn will reduce any market result further. When
coupled with the result that only 25% have developed mobile apps, it either
says that there is no market demand for digital enhancement, or that it will
take others to step up to the plate to make a change happen.

Why is the debate relevant today?

Firstly, we have seen a flattening out in ebooks sales in
the trade market in the developed digital markets. Secondly, we have heard increasing
media noise about the love of paper and the immersive and tactile book
experience. Importantly we have seen little new ebook or digital content market
change. Even the conference and marketing noise has refocused itself more
towards eMarketing and less about eContent. Various reports have started to
question the market’s appetite for merely more of the same digitally. Finally,
the illogical subscription offers have started to unravel as consumers do the
maths.

As other media segments all look towards expanding their
own propositions and consumer reach, the question of who does what, who is in
the best position and who owns what, starts to take shape. We often hear about
the game and video opportunities for book publishers and assume that book
publishers are best placed to realise these, often forgetting the on the other
side of the fence the other media segments are eying up books with the same
thoughts. However, until an ebook has the longevity to be a true sustainable consumer
investment and not just an often non-transferable commodity licence, book
publishers may well not wish to waste their resources listening to advisors who
are often chasing their own Digital Grails.

Thursday, April 09, 2015

One of today’s biggest mobile problems
is that of battery life. When the battery is fully charge the world is our at
out fingertips, but when it is running low or flat then we are effectively cut
off from the world. Having to recharge the smartphone can be a chore we would
rather live without and the time it often takes to recharge can seem an
eternity.

So what if you could charge your
battery in a minute, it held its charge longer and the battery itself was
smaller and more flexible?

Researchers in Stanford University have made a
breakthrough that could lead to the fast charging and longer lasting batteries
and have published their findings in Nature (April 6th). In an article, the
authors note, ‘This was the first time an ultra-fast aluminium-ion battery was
constructed with stability over thousands of cycles.’

Using an aluminum-ion prototype, they
were able to charge a smartphone type battery in 60 seconds, or 60 times faster
than the conventional lithium-ion battery. The protoype consists of a soft
pouch, containing aluminium for one electrode and a graphite foam for the other
- all surrounded by a special liquid salt. Also they claim that its
durability is also greater and that it can stand up to about 7,500
charge-discharge cycles before losing any of its capacity compared to Lithium-ion
batteries 1,000 cycles. But it doesn’t stop there and they also have found that
there are safety and pliability benefits.

Ming Gong, co-lead author of the Nature
study, ‘You can bend it and fold it, so it has the potential for use in
flexible electronic devices. Aluminium is also a cheaper metal than lithium.’

Prof Hongjie Dai from Stanford
University in California claims, ‘Our new battery won't catch fire, even if you
drill through it.’ This could address concerns raised on lithium-ion batteries,
which have resulted in recent bans on air transport.

Now the challenge is moving what was
discovered in the labs into being a commercial reality. Some question the
energy density of these batteries and whether the results in the lab can be
scaled up, but irrespective the findings start to point the way to creating new
opportunities to connect for longer, more efficiently and could open the doors
to many new devices and applications.

Wednesday, April 08, 2015

A company may have the best product or service and the
smartest technology, but these alone no longer guarantee success. They may have
a significant marketing budget, but billboards, page adverts, glossy catalogues
and call centres now longer guarantee sustainable success. The supply chain may
be well oiled and automated, but reducing waste and delivering to just in time
models are by themselves now longer offer unique value and guarantee success.
The sales and marketing messages may be slick and focused, but the message in a
social networked world is no longer the prize and getting it across to the
market no longer a simple process.

Mass market advertising still has its place, but direct
marketing now is challenging it even in the mass market. Being able to now
effectively engage with consumers and feed their habits, respond to them and
truly engage and retain them is the real goal. Creating brand loyalty and
through that product and service loyalty and a customer for life is the Holy
Grail. Once that was the sole domain of the retailer, or end service provider,
but in a world of virtual marketplaces the channel to market is changing and
with it the communications with the end consumer. Sharing consumers in
non-sharing partnerships is the same as not sharing basic trading information
before Supply Chain management.

We now crave the viral hit. That moment when the word of the
internet overtakes all the market budgets we could muster and value and
perception truly transfer to the mass. When it works it can create instant
recognition, market and demand but is just in time world not satisfying it on
demand can be as damaging as not creating it in the first place. However, like
winning the Lottery it can’t be achieved by all so bets have to be spread and
‘silver bullet’ strategies avoided.

Reputation can be built and destroyed in a click. Consumers,
like sheep tend now to follow and identifying the leaders and influences is a
challenge to all. It is truer than ever that one bad experience can influence
ten others. In fact the numbers are probably significantly higher today and the
impact far faster than yesterday’s word of mouth.

So what does this mean to the organisation and its focus?

We would suggest the following thoughts;

Effective trading partnerships across the supply and value
chain is more important than ever. In an channel were much is outsourced the
performance of others can now often impact a business more than it can imagine.
How do you organise your partners and work together for mutual benefit? Who
monitors partner relationships and their effectiveness? What information is
shared and how does it help the consumer engagement?

What is communicated with who, when and how?

Service extends to more than throwing goods over the wall,
or tracking parcels. Knowing what the other party wants to know and responding
to them when they want something is as important as the product they bought.
How many of us tear our hair out trying to get in touch with a Google, Amazon,
eBay, Apple etc. It’s as if the tablets only ever go one way and those that
effectively crack this challenge are the winners of tomorrow.

Information is as valuable as revenue. Collecting
information for the sake of collecting information may appeal but using that
information to engage with all is the goal. However, the challenge is learning
to share information in a manner which respects the privacy of the individual
but enables partners to help deliver and for businesses to engage with them.
Remember when suppliers and retailers started to share forecast and demand
information and the resultant benefits that gave to some supply chains?

Should we create a CCO (Chief Communication Officer) as it
clearly not a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) or a CIO (Chief Information
Officer). Perhaps the role fall within the emerging Digital Director remit.
Marketing is an obvious home but is often only consumer focused and lacking technology
depth. Is a COO (Chief Operating Officer) the appropriate function as is it
about process, touch points, messages and responses?

Different organisations will respond differently, according
to size, skills and complexity of the chain, but communications now needs to be
at the forefront of today’s boardroom thinking and developing the appropriate
strategy and measuring its performance and effectiveness is an opportunity for
all who sit around the board table to engage with.

Monday, April 06, 2015

It now seems a lifetime away when we started our technology
journey which we w all take for granted today. Back in ’68 there were only 32 computers
in the whole of Sheffield and we can even remember the companies, the computers
and what they were capable of. The explosion of computing that followed was first
aimed at companies and institutions and automating the numbers and providing
the information in near to real time as possible.

PCs and networks then changed the landscape and importantly
companies became aware of the huge waste created across the Supply Chains and
started to migrate from, ‘slipping notes under closed doors’ with trading their
partners to communicating and sharing information with them. Supply Chain
Management opened up communications through EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) standards and technology. Home
computing was also born albeit over extremely poor network services.

Business then started to look hard at their value chains and
their core functions and where they added value. Technology was still see as a
generic function but it started to deliver effective ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and later CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solutions, which were no longer bespoke but packed and configurable.
Outsourcing non-core activity became a given. IT finally started to break
through the board room glass ceiling and CIOs (Chief Information Officers) and CTOs (Chief Technology Officers) became common seats
around the table. The Internet was born and networks started to move from dirt
tracks to super highways and deliver and mobile communications, laptop PCs and
consumer technology took off.

Then came two major and significant seismic shifts in the
form of mobile communications technology and mobile applications. Social
networking became something that impacted all; first the individual both young
and old and then the corporate, institution and public entity. This explosion
of demand was further fuelled by rapid advances in network technology and the
emergence of truly mobile devices. We were all permanently switched on and
desired to communicate and carried our computer around in our pocket. Where we
and other ‘friends’ were, what we are doing and with whom and our thoughts was
now often now just a click away.

Harnessing all this mass of information and creating ‘Big
Data’ opportunities is now a business in itself.

Computing was no longer owned by the corporate, even warfare
was being waged over the airwaves as much as the battlefield. Fame could be
instantaneous at the individual level and commercial success was often no
longer reliant on huge marketing budgets and programmes alone.

Today commercial businesses now no longer just have a web
presence and ecommerce, but an array icons splattered in their sites to link
them to every social network where they also have their own presence. We have
Blogs, videos, and tweets to promote their products, services and values. In this
multi-dimensional world text is no longer enough and communications is no
longer one way. We have a new breed of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and analytic services knocking on
every door and customer and market insight programmes are the buzz.

So where exactly are you today and more importantly where
are you going tomorrow and how do you we achieve that journey?

How should businesses organise themselves for the
Communications World of tomorrow?

Tomorrow we will give our thoughts what we believe is one of
the greatest challenges today and into the near future.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

This week four cultural ministers from four powerhouses;
Italy, Poland, France and Germany jointly requested that the EU Commission
should think again about the rate of tax for ebooks. This comes only weeks
after the EU High Court ruled against France and Luxemburg and stated that
ebooks are different from physical books. They want the same rate applied as
physical books so countries such as the UK would have zero tax on both, as
opposed to zero on physical and 20% on digital.

We all recognise that Western Europe is a block of
democratic free trading nations with significant economic and political clout.
The challenge is often getting that balance between local national interest and
collective European interest. If it veers too far to one side it becomes unable
to change and what change takes place is often slow and bureaucratic. If it
moves too far to the other side it loses its core strength of collective responsibility
and benefit.

Taxation is a classic battleground where individual
countries raise their own taxes and spend them locally contributing a hefty sum
to the Union based on their often perceived ability to pay. So we have as many
different rates of tax as there are countries and as many ways of allocating
these as there are politicians and ideology. So what has this to do with
Digital Media and technology?

Anyone looking at the different tax rates across Europe
would think that someone has made trade less attractive not more attractive.
Anyone looking at the tax difference between the digital and physical book would
think that someone must have made a mistake and just forgotten to correct it.

One of the greatest challenges the European media industry
faces is getting the unelected commission and courts to realise that the world
has gone digital and that in doing so has created new opportunities not
threats. This taxation rule is a daft as the current lack of real action to
address the tax avoidance plays being made by multinationals. It is matched by
the lack of a rights and IP database. The inability to resell digital goods
because….

The balance between common sense and nonsense, micro control
and macro control, controlled migration and mass migration are challenges the
EU must rise to but repetitively fail to address.

But it would be good if we could just have the simple
understanding that a book is a book is a book. The price may vary from one form
to another but the way the governments view it and the tax they levy against it
should be consistent across all formats.

Tuesday, March 17, 2015

We talk of
wearable technology and see a deluge of wantabees who all want to be seen in their
‘Emporer’s New Clothes.’ But it often is frustrating that we continue to leave
many behind in our search for the next best gadget to be seen with. We were
taken aback years ago when we saw the ‘sixth sense’ development of Pranev Mistryand today some of the most exciting technology still remains with the likes of
MIT.

This week, we read
of a MIT’s finger device, which is not an iRing or iWatch mini, but a remarkable
device aimed at helping the visually Impaired read and engage with the written
word. It is still surprising that some ten years since we wrote the ‘Brave New
World’ report and we envisaged the era of the audio digital. However, its mass
adoption remains untapped and communities, such as the visually impaired, are
still being left behind. We obviously saw then that it was a simple transition
from physical audiobook to digital audiobook and although much has happened,
little mass adoption either upstream or downstream has occurred. At the time,
many saw print on demand and the digitalised text as offering the solution to
large print books and specialised monitors, but again much has happened, but
mass adoption hasn’t.

So what have MIT
delivered with their FingerReader?

FingerReader is a
device which today looks clunky and very much a prototype, but through its
camera is capable of character recognition and real time audio delivery. Assisting
the visually impaired with effectively and efficiently, reading paper printed and
ereader text must be a goal to strive for. FingerReader addresses the issues of
misalignment, focus, character accuracy, mobility and efficiency, introduces a new
method of scanning text of single lines, blocks of text or skimming the text
for important sections on the go, whilst giving the reader instant audio and a tactile
feedback.

So what you may
ask and how does this help others?

Well today the initial
focus is no the visually impaired and can enable
the blind to read without the need for Braille, or the visually impaired to
read without large print or blow up monitors. But the technology offers
much more to all and takes us one step further towards the true wearable and tactical
interfaces we lack today. Imagine just pointing you finger at text and hearing
an instantaneous playback and also capturing the text at the same time. We would
suggest that this is far more useful than creating a digital watch.

Imagine, joining
the dots between speech recognition and controls, OCR, Audio and all in the
pocket package of a smartphone.

Currently, FingerReader needs to
be connected to a laptop, but the researchers are now developing an open-source
version that will be able to use Android phones. Now that really opens up wider
opportunities for all.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

I have just bought a 1936 Imperial Companion 1 portable
typewriter and it now sits proudly on my desk alongside today’s technology. Is
it practical? Well not with my poor spelling and tendency to rework things.
Does it work? Yes and has a black and red ribbon which will one day need
replacing. Did I buy it to work? Well not really, I thought it of it as more of
a fusion of art and technology and a statement. The typewriter played a major
role in influencing where we are today. With my wife being granted a Royal
Warrant for her bookselling, I also love the Royal Warrant stamp on the
Typewriter dedicated to the late King George V.

So what has this to do with last week’s latest technology
announcement of an iWatch from Apple?

Well no one will expect the iWatch to survive nearly eighty
years and work. With our consumable technology today it’s hard to find one of
those early brick mobile phones let alone some of the early portable PCs and
the life expectancy of many is a mere few years. However, it is possible to see
the iWatch as an evolutionary step to shrink technology, change app development
and create a fashion icon to rival the Sinclair C5, Delorean car, Google’s
Glass and others. But as an investment it is very high risk and not even a
gamble.

Apple has with the iWatch put a placeholder on the market re
wearable technology. The iWatch itself is not the first technology watch, remember
those very first digital watches and more recently the eink ones and even more
recently the competitors to the iWatch. Apple has the clout and the followers
to sell enough to cover their stake, but is it a game changer? Do you want to
buy the mark1 version knowing mark2 is probably in the labs today and it will
only have a life expectancy of some 2 years?

I look at my analogue Longines watch, it is a designer statement,
practical and been around for many years. Would I replace it with a clunky
piece of technology that says ‘look at me iam a geek’?

Wearable technology will happen but exactly how and when is
debatable and the challenge it has is that it now has to compete with
smartphones that can do everything it can do and much, much more.

Eink technology was transient and could never be anything
else than a monochrome offer in a Technicolor world, but they established
ebooks. Tablets were always going to be caught between the home and the
smartphone and when the smartphone fits into a pocket and laptops became
lighter and thinner, there was only going to be one mobile winner. Print on
demand would show the potential to do short runs but fail to deliver the
ultimate ‘distribute and print’ model.

So as devices themselves become ‘smarter’ and connected does
the smartphone become the communications hub as predicted by our friend and futurist
Ray Hammond? As Bluetooth and WiFi expand does wearable technology move close
to the sensor nodes and speech, gestures, image and smell recognition become
the real wearable technology?

Jill O’Neill, Director Professional Development, NFAIS, raised a interesting comment ‘Why can't Apple
design and build the Star Trek tricorder instead?’ Now we both would be very
interested in one of them!

Friday, February 20, 2015

We live in
a world of surveillance, moving ever closer to Orwell’s 1984. We are surrounded
by CCTV cameras on buildings, streets and inside shops, some would suggest that
our internet messages and activity is also being monitored under the guise of
national interest and data gathering by software providers on our every click
is commonplace. This new business of ‘big data’ appears to be morphing without
control and is often hidden deep within the small print that we don’t read.

Last year
we reported on Adobe’s collecting of eBook reading information through their
service, which ironically was set up to protect copyright and the interests of
their clients - the publisher, but apparently not their other clients - the
consumer. LG was also discovered to be collecting details via some of their TVs
on their owners' viewing habits and on what devices were connected to their TVs
and was sending this back to the manufacturer, even if the users have activated
a privacy setting.

Have smart devices
now become too smart? Does the technology allow others to look in and to gather
data and who and how can we control what we often can’t see and have not
authorised?

The latest ‘data
gathering news’ is about users Samsung Smart TV users who use voice activation
to control their Samsung Smart TV. It is now claimed that the TV doesn’t just ‘listen’
to commands but to everything that is said and may share what they hears with
Samsung or third parties, which is believed to be Nuance, the voice recognition
specialist. It’s like having a ‘Gogglebox’, or worse still Orwell’s vision in
every home. The users are unaware they are being monitored and although this
story broke via a story in online
news magazine the Daily Beast it questions how big this iceberg may
be?

The Samsung
policy states that the TV set will be listening to people in the same room to
try to spot when commands or queries are issued via the remote. It states: ‘If
your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that
information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party.’

However,
like Adobe, Skype and Viper before them, Samsung then send data to third
parties without any encryption!

Samsung in
its defence state ‘If a consumer consents and uses the voice recognition
feature, voice data is provided to a third party during a requested voice
command search. At that time, the voice data is sent to a server, which
searches for the requested content then returns the desired content to the TV.’

They also go on to state that, ‘Smart-TV
owners would always know if voice activation was turned on because a microphone
icon would be visible on the screen.’

Does this same logic apply to other
voice recognition services which are increasingly being deployed on devices?

But it is not just about gathering
data but also about pushing unwanted data onto the consumer. Recently Lenovo was
caught out installing adware onto new consumer computers on initial activation
of the PC. The Superfish adware which injects third-party ads on Google
searches and websites without the user’s permission has subsequently been
removed.

Data gathering is done for a number
of purposes; to help hone and target product and services to an individual, to
sell behaviour and interest information to third parties and to eavesdrop on
individuals. The problem is that the technology can often be the same and the lines
between moral and not can often blur.

Thursday, February 05, 2015

Public Libraries where
often built as large standalone buildings in the central Victorian and Edwardian civic centres, many of which
remain today. They then spawned local branches with the expansion of the
suburbs and even had mobile units to cater for the rural areas. Currently the
role and overall library offer is being brought into constant commercial and
digital question. Where should they be sited? What should they provide? What is
their role in the community? What is difference between local, civic and
national Libraries?

As UK retail profiles continue to
change The Local Data Company, which monitors 3,000 town and shopping centres
and retail parks, said 20% of shops in the North of England were now empty, compared
10% in the South and that 20% of the shops it tracked had been empty for more
than three years, amounting to almost 10,000 outlets. So we have retail space
and changing retail consumer habits.

However, it is no longer merely going
out of town. UK Supermarkets are having to rethink their store strategy and property
portfolio in light of the threat from the bargain market and from the quality
end. Big is no longer best and out of town doesn't fit with changing consumer
behaviour away from the bulk buy to more frequent convenience shopping. The
likes of Tesco has named some 43 stores it is closing across the country. In
November, Sainsbury's said it was scrapping plans for new stores, while Morrison’s
plans to close 10 loss-making stores this year and there is now a growing
number of empty undeveloped space sitting vacant. However Asda, Lidl and Aldi continue
to expand but how long Asda will do so is debatable.

So what has the changing retail habits
and property mix got to do with public libraries? This week we made aware of a
large WalMart store which was abandoned by the retailer in McAllen in the Rio
Grande Valley. The city took the bold step to spent $24 million and transform
the abandoned store into a 123,000-square-foot public library and community
hub. The building now includes a computer lab, a cafe, meeting rooms with
videoconferencing capabilities and a 180-seat auditorium. It effectively
released their old, cramped 40,000-square-foot main library, and placed it back
in the center of the community. The American LibraryAssociation and the InternationalInterior Design Association, were so impressed that they named it
the overall winner of their2012 LibraryInterior Design Awards

Across the US there are some 130
former Walmarts available and the question on how to reuse these and other ‘boxes’
is now being seriously looked at by all and the success of this and other
library community hubs is evident with visitors and activity. Not every ‘big
box’ is becoming a library and there are many examples of transformations across the US.

There are many examples where
libraries have been located within shopping malls and this concept is not new
but the idea of shops within a library may be more novel. Another potential
opportunity is to tie libraries and social services into new housing
developments in a similar way to how social housing is tied into new developments.
This could mean that once a development area reaches a certain size or density
then those developments within that area are obliged to contribute a little bit
more to the community. Greenwich has done something similar in the new East
Greenwich development where it has relocated a public swimming pool, a public library
and small housing and social offices within a new private housing development.

Whether it locating libraries within
malls, creating malls around libraries, location libraries with new housing
developments or some other variant, the case is that libraries belong in
communities and should not be standalone propositions. Libraries need to do
more than simply offer access to books and other information and material. They
need to be designed and sited for the 21st century not the 19th
century.

Maybe the optimum size of a printed
book in the near future will not be determined by the print economics, but
instead will be governed by its weight and dimensions. Delivery of small
parcels such as books by drones may be science fiction to many, but it is
clearly on the agenda of some today.

Last November, Amazon's Prime Air was
seeking UK Drone experts in Cambridge to help them test drones to deliver
packages on up to 2.3kg (5lb) in weight to customers within 30 minutes of an
order being placed. Prime Air adverts for engineers, software developers and
scientists were posted on Amazon's jobs site.

When Prime Air was announced in
December 2013, Amazon said it might take five years for the service to actually
start and they already have started work in their R&D labs in Seattle. Amazon
is not alone in pursuing this technology, with others such as Google, UPS and
DHL all trailing services. As one would expect, safety is a major issue and tight
restrictions on the use of drones in the US have led Google to carry out its testsin Australia.

Now Alibaba, China's biggest internet
retailer has gone one step further and says it has begun actual testing of drone-based
deliveries to hundreds of customers. The three day trial will be limited to one-hour
flight destinations from its distribution centres in Beijing, Shanghai and
Guangzhou and also to orders of a specific type of ginger tea which conforms to
helping limit the weight.

Looking out of the window today at
the wind, snow and low cloud, we wonder how many Prime Air flight cancellations
will not be due to heavy traffic over London, but down to British bad weather.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Provisional administrator Christian Köhler-Ma has been
appointed to German ebook service provider Txtr.

Txtr provided ebook solutions to retailers such as
Foyles, device makers and mobile operators such as Deutsche Telecom. They developed
a large international repository of ebooks which they serviced through a cloud
based white label ebookstore and a comprehensive set of apps. Their service was
based on Adobe ACS4 DRM and they sold ereaders based on eink technology.

At the time Foyles pinned its flag on Txtr in 2012, Sam
Husain, CEO said, “Our new eBook store and apps, ‘Foyles powered by txtr’, make
buying and reading eBooks as easy as possible, without the added expense of
having to buy new hardware. It is the next step in our on-going journey to
serve our customers with a choice of books, across the widest possible range,
in every format.” The question now is whether their customers will still
be serviced from a bankkrupt cloud?

Txtr developed ‘The Beagle’ which they launched in 2012.
The 5" device was designed to be paired with a smartphone and to be a
"companion reader" with smartphones and subsidized by new mobile
contracts. However despite the fanfare, the low price, it was too late to
market and came at a time when the smartphone and tablets were replacing the old
eink technology.

The txtr team launched Blloon, a new ebook
subscription service, which was set up as a separate entity and therefore should
not be impacted by the current situation. At its launch last summer txtr
founder Thomas Leliveld, said that, ‘Blloon aspires to offering a lower
cost ebook service in a market already crowded by Scribd and Kindle Unlimited.’

Blloon's subscription model is different and is based
on pages and a lower subscription price. Leliveld said at the time, ‘We aren't
offering an expensive ‘unlimited’ service simply because that isn’t the
demographic we are targeting. And people can only read so much. We’re welcoming
young people, the majority of whom currently read up to 12 books a year.
Providing a package that allows them to expand to two or three a month makes it
an attractive and affordable offering - without any compromise on the quality
of the titles. In time we hope it will encourage them to read even more.’

So as Blinkbox follows Sony and bites the dust it is
now to be followed by Txtr. The question is not how many more will follow but
what the impact these collapses have on consumer confidence not in ebooks but
in ebook services who may leave them and their purchases in the cold. These
events also strengthen the case for subscription services. However subscription
services may be able to be switch off like a tap and impact the consumer less
as he merely moves his subscription to another service

The music industry history is littered with artists who claim they
were duped into bad contracts and not paid a fair amount. There are many that
claim that the internet is making things worse. There are those whose work
fails to earn out and find themselves locked into a perpetual agreement. There
are those who establish themselves only to find that the contract doesn’t
reflect the change and is inequitable. Van Morrison claims he never earned a cent for writing and recording 'Brown Eyed Girl' and even penned a song, 'The Big Royalty Check' to vent his anger in later years. However, sometimes justice works and
those who need it and were duped out of it, get their reward.

Sly and the Family Stone created a bridge between 60s and 70s
white and black audiences and between soul, R&B. pop and were the fathers
of funk and their driver Sly Stone was the most colourful of the band. Their
hits included ‘Family Affair’, I Want To Take You Higher’ and ‘Dance to the
Music’. They even appeared at Woodstock.

However, Stone found himself owed millions of dollars in royalties
and has been fighting for some 5 years to get paid. Unfortunately, his fight
led to years of struggle with him even being homeless and living in a van in
LA. In 2013 an appeal was rejected that deemed BMI, Sony, and Warner were not
liable to pay and the argument moved towards events that took place back in
1989 when Stone signed his financial control over to his lawyer Gerald
Goldstein and the company Even St. Production. He claimed that they had diverted
millions in royalties, leaving him unable to get the money he said was due him.

Stone, testified that he had not received any royalty payments
between 1989 and 2000 but attorneys for Goldstein and Glenn Stone contended
that the singer was paid millions, but broke an agreement to make new records.

A LA jury has now found in Stone’s favour and awarded him $2.5
million in damages against Even St. Productions, $2.45 million against
Goldstein and $50,000 against attorney Glenn Stone. A total of $5 million. However,
the defendants claim that they will fight the ruling so the case unfortunately is
likely to drag on.

What is
more important and best for books, a group of intellectuals sitting round a
table, or on a couch, talking about a book, or a good adaptation on film which
clearly references the works, or a short story competition that stimulates
thousands?

Best-selling
author and chairman of the Costa Book Awards judging panel, Robert Harris, obviously
thinks the couch and in announcing the £30,000 Costa Book of the Year, used his
speech to criticise the BBC and its approach to books. He yearned back to the
good old days when audiences grappled with Robert Robertson and Melvyn Bragg,
often pontificated about the plot and characters in books. Days when authors
sat on couches in the limelight and long and obscure words were more frequent
than on Countdown.

There
have been significant successes and at its peak Richard and Judy made respectable
numbers. Oprah made a huge impact in the US. BBC at both national and local radio
levels often promotes books through its programming and even with dedicated
slots such as on the Simon Mayo show. When publishers promotion and marketing works,
slots on prime time are available through the likes of the One Show, but there
has to be something more than just another story. One only has to look at the
huge appeal of crime, mystery and thrillers on TV and correlate this to the cult
type following some authors of this genre now have.

However
the corporation does not have an obligation to provide shows just to promote
authors and books perched on a couch. Some would suggest that on the night, Harris,
was merely playing to his publishing industry audience, others that he is sadly
out of touch.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

So would you invest in a service that still
has to prove itself or someone who has done it more than once and brings
ability to the table?

The troubled UK supermarket Tesco was forced
recently to refocused on its core business and as a result dropped its
potential universal media service offer Blinkbox. The film/video service was
acquired by TalkTalk for a reported £5million and Australian company Guvera entered
talks to buy the music service. This left the ebook business Mobcast, which it
bought for £4.5m from author Andy McNab and business partner Tony Lynch in September 2012. The Blinkbox ebook service only went live last March.

So would you buy Blinkbox ebooks or look at
alternative ways to invest less for more?

Waterstones went for the acquisition to buy
the ebook business from Tesco, but they failed to agree and parted. We now have
reports that Kobo are after their customer list which is a good option provided
they are active, the sales generated are worth the investment, the data itself
is in good order and of course the price is right. However, customer lists are not
exactly million dollar purchases and list brokers could probably offer a
cheaper and equally attractive demographic.

So the clock continues to tick and the
question must be whether Tesco will let it go in a fire sale and write off the
debt or will continue to strive to find a home for either the debt or the
service?

It hard to see how BlinkBox ebooks making the
return Tesco sought and decoupling the three media streams dilutes further any
value it had. Some would question how they had grown to 60 core staff, what on
earth they were all doing, the price they paid in 2012 and the level of effort
and cost they threw at it to rebranded it, repackaged it and re-staffed it. Some
would suggest a classic case of buying a pup and certainly something that they
could have achieved quicker and for less money.

The markets often don’t follow logic and when
someone wants to participate they often lunge for a quick fix and buy what they
perceive is a good buy. Due diligence is often hard when its about perception, interpretation
and gut feel and none of the major UK supermarkets have been able to bring to
market an effective digital media service and with their current refocusing its
hard to see them trying too hard moving forward. Waterstones is likewise
refocusing and continue to show little appetite, or ability, to take on
digital. Some would suggest that buying Blinkbox was never going to fit
Waterstones whatever the deal.

So today we hear Kieron Smith is joining
Blackwells. Now that’s a smart move by Blackwells and considerably cheaper and
wiser than buying a service that you would only spend a fortune on, to take
apart, to fight a battle you aren’t going to win.

Blackwells has always had a good history of
digital investment and although they have had their own challenges and very
difficult markets they continue to press forward. By acquiring the man and not
the service, they bring in someone with very strong digital credentials who has
done it before in the trade and someone who has proven his ability to adapt and
could well add another dimension to their existing market segments.

As pointed out on Dragon’s Den it is often
the person that investors should focus on and the service or product may be a
bonus.

Nielsen's
2014 annual review of the music industry has negative signs in front of chain
store sales (-20%), total new album sales (-14%), and sales of new songs online
(-10.3%), with only positive signs in front of streaming music and vinyl album
sales. This is despite CD sales in the US generating some $141 million last
year.

Many
believe that the book trade should learn from the digital revolution that is
taking place within the music business. The reality is that the music business
is very different and right across the music business there is both evolution
and revolution. Some changes happening quickly and completely killing off the
past, whilst others are slowly evolving. From creator to consumer digital
change is taking place.

We
see many changes at the consumer end. Technology has replaced the preceding technology.
Eight track was replaced by cassette, cassette was replaced iTunes, iTunes downloads
was usurped by MP3 downloads, which is being replaced with streaming on demand.
This is without the parallel evolution from MTV to YouTube and the growth from
digital internet radio stations and music discovery services such as Shazam.

Music
owners have in the past been forced to replace their collections, but the new
streaming technology now questions why they would want to reinvest yet again
when it’s all available on demand. On demand is itself is fuelling
subscription. The changes are logical but the speed of change is significant
and the redefinition of ownership has enabled many to rediscover vinyl whose
sound was of a higher quality, but its market share is still only 3.5%. When we
first started this blog we thought Spiral Frog would capture the new market,
but they failed to cross the line and their place was taken by Spotify.

Spotify
now claim 35 million songs on their service and there are many more renditions
now on services such as YouTube and SoundCloud. But even with this enormous
repository of songs many still go unheard whilst others, like butterflies have
one season in which they flourish.

When
you look at the production, distribution and business, change is often less
revolutionary and more evolutionary. Social networks and self-promotional marketing
are starting to eat away at the mid list. Unless you are in the top 1% which
generate 80% of the money, then you may have to rely on the hit makers which now
are TV driven by talent shows such as The X Factor, The Voice, Pop Idol.

To
be a hit, you now need serious financial backing, or social pull. With these
changes come changes in the reward structure for all. Some will say that there
are now too many sticky fingers in the diminishing pot. So artists are having
to rethink the old models and balance greater control and percentage of revenue,
against lower revenues and often chump change return. A good friend and musician
commented to us only this week that selling direct gave them 100% whilst
scattering to the digital unknown gave them little. Merchandise, concert
revenues and secondary rights are growing in importance. This impacts how
artists are managed, make money, record and distribute. It changes where the
producers and labels make their money and the increases the importance of the
back catalogue and Intellectual property.

So
can books learn from music?

The
consumer end is very different and what is clear is the physical book isn’t
going away in all sectors and will retain a major share of the market whilst
the distribution economics can support it. However, like music the pot is not
growing but changing and this is putting similar strains in the production and
development area of the value chain. There are many similarities here with respect
to back list, mid list and front list and self-publishing. Even signed authors
are having to work harder on their social skills as publishers rein in the
marketing and promotion to focus on the best shots.

The
one thing that all media segments share is the polarisation of value at either
end of the value chain and reducing influence of the middle to many.

Friday, January 23, 2015

The internet age has started to enable classrooms without
walls, or even borders and promote the leading educators to engage with all
students. But is this reality today or merely technology waiting to be adopted
and adapted and fighting much educational technology inertia? We have the same curriculum
and exams, but an often significant variance between how students are engaged,
motivated, learn and achieve the standards sought.

Learning resources, such as textbooks help teachers to
deliver the lessons, but can now technology allows them to do it smarter and
more consistently?

One approach comes from, The Stephen Perse Foundation in
Cambridge. They are a leading UK private school and the current ‘Independent
School of the Year’, boast some of the best results in England and have announced
that they are publishing 12 digital multimedia textbooks for IGCSE biology. The
textbooks will be available to download free online from Apple's iBooks online
store to use on iPad tablet and cover an entire exam syllabus. The course is
currently taken by some 500,000 students in 160 countries. They also plan to extent the list to cover
other topics such as molecules and enzymes and animal nutrition and already
claim to have had a significant market response to their 100 course they have
made available through iTunes U courses.

Today Amazon announced another new approach via KDP EDU, or what
they refer to as Kindle Textbook Creator. This is aimed at empowering all to
create eTextbooks and other educational content that is enhanced with digital
features such as notes, flashcards, bookmarks and highlights. Content can be prepared,
published, and promoted as eTextbooks alongside and other learning material and
all can be access on tablets, iPads, Android tablets and smartphones, Macs and
PCs. This venture could therefore allow the best educational authors to do it themselves,
to self publish and lead to an explosion of material and provide choice. But
who will determine the good, bad and indifferent?

Kindle Textbook Creator claims to make it easy for ‘anyone
to take any PDF and create a richly featured and widely available eTextbook.’ Kindle
Textbook Creator will offer authors royalties potentially up to 70%, while
keeping their rights and maintaining control of their content. They can also enrol
their books in KDP Select for additional royalty opportunities like Kindle
Unlimited and the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, and access to marketing
tools like Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions.

But are
these potential extras real opportunities for this material, or false
incentives to lure authors?

It is often said that each of us has a book inside us and
self publishing is unlocking many of these today in the trade market. But does
every teacher have a textbook inside them and will this start to unlock these
or will the lure of the reward still deter the best to stick with the
traditional route.

So which publishing model will prevail, the self published,
the traditional, or the best school?

Many big questions remain. How will Amazon police copyright,
through the implementation of plagiarism-detection services and links to
registration databases, to ensure copyrighted material, be it text, pictures,
artwork, graphs etc doesn’t merely just get ‘cut and pasted’ into a new work. How
will quality rise to the surface and will there be a mass adoption of ‘my
textbook, teacher notes and associated material, or will the majority opt for
the tried and tested and publisher underwritten option? Will a flood of
resources effect the current pricing and
drive down or raise the cost of traditional material?

Today there should be no reason why the standard of
education is governed by location, your purse or access to materials and
resource. Yet education is still localised, standards vary and engagement is
down to individuals. Facilities such as TED Ed and the Khan Academy are viewed
with skepticism by many, some would suggest that the curriculum is more geared
to robotics than to learning and the take up of technology varies significantly
in spend, application and quality.

To learn more about publishing textbooks through KDP, or to
download Kindle Textbook Creator, visit kdp.amazon.com/edu.

About Me

Before entering publishing I worked for many years as a Senior Executive in blue chip organisations in the retail, oil and automotive sectors. My publishing induction was initially as Director of Strategic Development at VISTA. There I was responsible for, and a contributor to, their highly acclaimed ‘Publishing in the 21st Century’ research series, the primary creator behind publishing services PubEasy and ‘batch.co.uk’, the initiator of the development of new Front Office systems to support publishers. In 2006 I joined Value Chain International(VCIL) initially as VP Marketing, Media and Publishing before becoming their President in 2009. In July 2011 the company's operations were acquired by Syncordia. I hold two non executive positions with publishing industry players Bibliophile Ltd and Haven Group and currently setting up Read Petite a service focused on providing digital short form material online via subscription.
Email mdaniels@opus57.co.uk